


A Bullet Through Your Heart

by unicornpoe



Series: (I'm) One of the Dirty Guns [2]
Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Books, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Loneliness, Power Dynamics, Redemption, Siblings, Slow Burn, Sort of? - Freeform, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, long-distance phone call buddies to lovers, this is too tender for a fic about a guy who tried to murder three people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22270165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: Ransom was in a room that was mostly empty, seated at a table that was cheap-looking and round. He wore an orange jumpsuit. Marta should have expected that: she felt a jolt anyway.He was in prison. She was in prison, looking at him.Marta couldn’t look at his face, not yet. She looked at the rest of him instead.*Seven months after Ransom turned himself in, Marta got a call.
Relationships: Marta Cabrera/Ransom Drysdale
Series: (I'm) One of the Dirty Guns [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588981
Comments: 45
Kudos: 712
Collections: Knives Out





	A Bullet Through Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> i'm back baBYYY
> 
> 1\. this is part two of a series. i guess you could technically read this without reading the part that preceded it, but you'd be confused, and doesn't life already have enough confusion in it? yes. i'm saying yes for you. go read part 1 and then come back.   
> 2\. upon a second viewing of the movie, i realized that marta's sister's name is ALICE not ALICIA like the tag says. this is the first time ao3 has ever wronged me and i'm honestly still reeling from the shock.  
> 3\. i know nothing about the judicial system. NOTHING. you can tell.

There were two bookshelves in Marta Cabrera’s study. 

On the left of her armchair: halfway full from the top down. Books with worn edges and lightly cracked spines, books with evidence of nights spent reading instead of sleeping, of being toted along like portable entertainment. A year and a half of progress. 

On the right of her armchair: halfway full from the bottom up. Books with glossy covers and unbent pages. Books that hadn’t been lived in yet. The ones that were left. 

  
  
  


It was July, but Marta couldn’t tell. Inside the house it was shady and cool. Impenetrable stone, thick enough that even the heat of the summer sun couldn’t sink through. Shaded all around by trees. 

It had always been like that. 

That was alright. Marta liked being cool, generally: even though the house was moderate in regards to temperature, the clutter lent it a stuffy air. She couldn’t imagine sweating in this stuffed-full library, behind a desk drowning in papers and inkwells and a baseball that had never been moved. Across from an unlit fireplace. Across from a wheel of knives. 

“Marta,” said Alicia. She was standing in the doorway. Her long hair was a little bit limp, like she’d been outside where the heat could actually get to a person. Maybe she was. Marta didn’t know. 

Her eyes were expectant. 

Marta shut the laptop sitting open in front of her. Numbers and letters and words like  _ lawsuit  _ and  _ defendant  _ and  _ will  _ were swimming across the backs of her eyelids. Her head was splitting. 

“It’s that funny detective.”

Marta stood. “Blanc?” she asked, even though there wasn’t anybody else it could be. “I thought he was in the Carribean.”

“Well you thought wrong,” Alicia said dryly as Marta pushed by her. “He’s in your foyer.”

“Our foyer,” Marta corrected automatically. 

A pause. Alicia wasn’t following her. She didn’t like to mix with any aspect of Marta’s life, not really: didn’t like Blanc, didn’t like this house. She was leaving for an internship in Boston in a couple of days. Good, maybe. She wasn’t happy here. 

“Right,” she said. 

Marta wasn’t hurt. She understood why her sister wouldn’t love this place, this life: it was Marta’s and Marta’s alone, no matter how she used it to her family’s advantage. Harlan willed it to her. Her mother could live here, and Alicia could stay here on breaks, but it was Marta’s house. 

Even though the Thrombeys were trying their best to take it away from her. 

Marta turned the corner. 

“Ah, Miss Cabrera,” said Blanc upon spotting her. He was wearing an exceptionally neat suit. He was also exceptionally tan. Marta had the urge to laugh. “So good to see you.” 

He stepped forward and took her hand, shaking it firmly. He always greeted her like that. Like they were business partners. 

“Mr. Blanc,” said Marta, nodding, and knew she wasn’t doing a good job of keeping that smile hidden behind her teeth. “Likewise. I thought you were on vacation?”

“No time for relaxation when duty calls, Miss Cabrera,” said Blanc, and let go of her hand in order to lift his briefcase up to eye level. “We have a conundrum.”

“Oh, a conundrum,” said Marta, and let the smile go. “I love those.”

  
  
  


That was how things went. 

People came and left. Alicia visited Marta as an in-between point, a place to stop before she went on to their next destination. Blanc stopped by for tea and an hour of avid conversation, long enough to show photos of a crime scene and get Marta’s opinion before he left, too. 

Even Mama was leaving at the end of the summer. Her boyfriend had asked her to move in with him, and she was going to. 

Marta was happy for her, of course. Happy that she finally felt safe enough in the world to do as she pleased. 

She just wished— 

The house was big. That was all. Big, and empty, and quiet. 

And Marta was only one girl. 

One girl, stuck in the middle while the world revolved around her. 

She had lots to do. She kept herself busy. Charity dinners and fundraisers for things she actually cared about, getting all of Harlan’s finances in order, fending off the Thrombeys, reading and reading and reading. She didn’t know if she’d ever be a nurse again—didn’t know if she could—but the option still existed. 

She was lonely. Was the only problem. 

She hadn’t heard from since that night. 

Which didn’t directly correlate to her loneliness. Didn’t even indirectly correlate, she told herself. He was a person who she used to talk to sometimes. He was a person who had called her whenever he could, because he couldn’t call anybody else. He was a person who showed up at her house because he wanted to, and would have left if she had said. He was a person who did what she told him to. 

He was a person that had killed his grandfather. 

He was a person that didn’t like her, once. 

He was a person that had apologized. 

Marta didn’t ever ask herself whether or not she missed him. When you couldn’t lie, you tended to avoid questions with difficult answers. 

  
  
  


August came. Alicia was gone, still in Boston for a few more weeks, and then from there she’d go directly back to school. Marta was supposed to remember to send her that shirt she’d forgotten to pack.

Mama was moving today. All her things were packed up, sitting in cardboard boxes in the foyer. By the door. Piled upon the bench. 

It was hot outside. Marta’s hair was down, and it stuck to the back of her neck with sweat, the weight of late afternoon sun. 

Mama was smiling as she hugged Marta, as she placed a kiss upon her forehead. Marta tried to smile back. 

“Are you sure you’re ok with this,  _ mija?”  _ Mama’s fingers were cool against her cheek. “I can stay.”

“No, Mama, go,” Marta said, and meant it. She did. “I’ll be just fine.”

She would be. The house was big, but who didn’t want a big house? The house was quiet, but she would fill it with music. 

The house was empty. She’d never gotten around to hiring a maid, or a gardener, or a cook. 

The trees rustled loudly overhead as Marta watched the moving van kick up dust as it tumbled down the driveway. Swaying green over blistering blue. 

  
  
  


The phone was ringing when she stepped inside. 

She let go of the door before she could stop it from slamming. 

Marta hated this. 

This: the clench of her heart every time she heard a phone ring. The way her pulse sped up, the singing thrill that went through her. 

It was never him. Never him, or anyone with any information relating to him, other than last January when Linda had called after Ransom violated parole and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. 

Still. Marta’s heart raced as she hurried to the study and picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear. 

“Hello?”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but the susurras of static filling her ear. 

And then—

A breath. Shaky. 

“You know, I can’t stop thinking about that shitty motel.”

Marta’s knees were made of jelly. 

She sat down. Hard. Hand over her heart, beating like it was working its way out from beneath her skin. 

“I think I got bed bugs there. Can’t believe you made me sleep in one of those beds.”

Marta leaned back in Harlan’s chair.

Ransom’s voice was low, and quiet, and didn’t match the words coming out of his mouth. Ransom. 

Just—Ransom. 

God, it had been so long. 

“I guess I should thank you though,” he said, a little too fast. “Was better than the floor, at least. I mean. You had the right to make me stay down there, if you’d wanted to, and I would have, you know that. You didn’t though. I can’t stop thinking about that, either.” 

Another pause. Like seven months ago: the sound of him breathing in, and out, in, and out. She  _ liked  _ that sound. God help her, she did. 

Marta wondered what he was doing, right now, this very second. If he was sitting in a room alone, or if there were guards watching him. What he looked like. If his bruises had healed up, if he’d gained back all that weight he’d lost. 

Marta wondered if Ransom ever missed her. He could lie, so it was safe enough for him to think about it. 

She hoped he did. She hoped he thought about her every day. 

“You never used to want to talk to me,” Ransom said, “and I’m not a fucking—a fucking optimist, or whatever, so it’s not like I think that would’ve changed in the past seven months. I—fuck.” He stopped. Let out a huff of air, sharp and frustrated, and Marta could imagine the way he might be clenching his jaw a little, all uptight, internal annoyance. “I’m not asking you to talk to me,” he said, and he sounded angry now, forming each word harshly with blunt corners. Marta knew he wasn’t angry with her. “That’s not what this is. I’m not going to call you again. I was just… thinking about you.”

_ I was just thinking about you.  _

Marta hated herself sometimes. Hated the way she reacted to him. 

“Ransom,” she said. Her voice sounded scraped and dry, held tight in the back of her throat. “Call me again.”

He made a sound like the beginning of a laugh, maybe, or the sound you make when you can’t decide whether or not you want to cry. 

It made Marta sit right up in her chair. Spine straight and tall, eyes snapping open, every nerve inside of her tuned in to the bit of him she could access over miles of air and telephone wires. 

“Jesus Christ,” he said, nearly a whisper. “Jesus Christ. Ok. Ok. I will.”

They sat for a moment, those words between them. He was going to call her again. She had asked him to call her again. 

She had asked him to call her again. 

“Are you angry?” Ransom asked. 

There was that strange childish side of him, coming out at the oddest of moments. He was hesitant to ask her, she could tell; like he thought she’d say yes. 

“You left me in that motel,” said Marta. Her voice was stronger than his. “You left without telling me where you were going. I was helping you, and you scared me.”

“Marta,” Ransom said. He sounded slightly frayed. “That isn’t an answer.”

Marta closed her eyes again. She didn’t have to answer him. 

“No,” Marta said after a few moments of just that, just them: just Ransom, somewhere in a prison, and Marta, somewhere in a newly empty house. “I’m not. You did the right thing. I was… I’m proud of you.”

“What the shit,” Ransom rasped, voice weak and more than a little stunned. She almost smiled at that. He wasn’t trying to be funny, but the sheer volume of his bewilderment was amusing to her. It made her  _ want  _ to be kind to him, just to get that reaction. 

Ransom Drysdale: manipulative even when he wasn’t actively manipulating. 

“I don’t think I…” Ransom started, but he trailed off soon enough into quiet. Breathing patterns. Whispered static. Miles between them, and sounds like small promises. 

Marta had been mad, for a little while. After that morning when she had woken up and looked out the window to see Ransom being arrested; as she drove home without stopping, her hands tight on the steering wheel, struggling to breathe evenly, hating herself for the way she wanted to cry. She had been angry. She had cursed him, his family, herself. 

But not for very long. 

He had turned himself in. He had done the right thing—even if he had to do the wrong thing in order to get there. 

He was a mess. But he had apologized to her. 

He was trying to fix it. 

“I’d be furious if you ever did it again though,” Marta said, and Ransom laughed. Weakly, but he laughed. 

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be getting out of this shithole anytime soon.”

“Oh,” said Marta quietly. She hoped he didn’t ask her how she felt about that. She truly didn’t know. 

On one hand, Marta was glad that he might be locked away for a long time: it was only right. He had killed Harlan, he had tried to kill Fran. He was… he was not good. 

On the other, the thought sent a pang through her, sharp enough that she didn’t want to examine it. 

“How long will you be there now?” Marta asked. The Thrombeys didn’t communicate most things with Marta, let alone the details of Ransom’s arrest and incarceration. Marta probably could have found out if she’d pried deeply enough, but she hadn’t wanted to. 

She hadn’t thought she could. 

“The length of my original sentence is what they tell me,” Ransom said. God, she could almost see him: the way he’d be looking at her, close and unwavering, warm on her skin. The shape of his mouth when he smiled. “I guess it depends on how much money Linda is willing to throw around. She’s still pissed at me, so I think it’ll be awhile.”

“Good,” Marta said. 

Ransom laughed again. 

“Well,” said Marta. “You know.”

“Yeah,” said Ransom. He sounded far away. “I do.”

The rustle of fabric: he was leaning forward or sitting back, he was crossing his legs, he was shifting in his seat. 

She was sitting still, and she was listening to him. 

“Marta?”

“Yes?” 

Ransom didn’t answer immediately. He was taking his time. Thinking through everything before he spoke to her. 

Marta supposed he’d had a lot of time to think through this conversation in the past few months. 

“They do let visitors in. Linda came right after I’d been with you, so she could yell at me a bit. I told her not to come back, but I didn’t, like, put a moratorium on  _ all  _ visitations. I mean—” he broke off. There was something desperate in his voice that she’d only heard from Ransom a very few times. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

Marta did. The certainty of it made her blood thrill through her veins. 

“Say it anyway,” Marta murmured. “I want you to say it anyway.”

Another sound from him—a quiet hum, voice caught at the tail-end of a breath, soft and involuntary. 

“Come see me, Marta,” Ransom said roughly. There was a tinge of shame to his words, and that was what made all of this alright; that was why Marta knew she would. “I want you to come.”

“My house is empty,” Marta said closely. A truth for a truth. He had given her what she asked for, but she wasn’t unjust. How could she be, when her voice still shook like that? “And I hate being alone.”

The silence was understanding. “Yeah,” he said, so low Marta could barely discern it from other background noise. “Yeah.”

  
  


The next morning Marta got dressed, stuffed five hundred dollars in her purse, and locked the house behind her. 

She sat in her car without moving for a moment, her hands unmoving on the steering wheel. 

Marta was leaving the house empty behind her. Nobody to watch over it, to guard it, to protect it. It was free and open for Thrombeys and Thrombey minions alike. 

Maybe she should invest in security.

Maybe she should invest in security before she did… this. 

But even as she had the thought, she knew she wouldn’t be following through. There was too much anticipation built up in her chest, putting pressure on her at a level that indicated she’d explode if she didn’t do something to relieve it—and soon. 

Marta turned her key in the ignition. It flared to life. 

Marta drove. 

  
  
  


It took all five hundred of the dollars, but she finally bribed her way inside to see him, restraining order or no. 

Her hands were shaking as the guard led her through the dimly-beige hallways. 

Ransom was in a room that was mostly empty, seated at a table that was cheap-looking and round. He wore an orange jumpsuit. Marta should have expected that: she felt a jolt anyway. 

He was in prison. She was in prison, looking at him. 

Marta couldn’t look at his face, not yet. She looked at the rest of him instead. 

He was still thin beneath the uniform. His hands were big and resting passively on the domes of his knees, tendons standing out in sharp relief, fingers lax and blunt. His wrists were raw, bruised a little: he’d had cuffs on recently, she thought, and he hadn’t been happy about it. 

All of him—

Marta’s breath felt splintered in her chest. 

Ransom was watching her so closely that she could feel his gaze on her, even without glancing up. Marta dragged her eyes to his face. 

That avid line of sight. Those blue eyes: 

Blue eyes ringed by pink-gray shadows, blue that had fallen on her and settled there. The stubble from months ago was a beard now. Marta thought:  _ oh.  _ His mouth was a tender and terrible line. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” said Ransom, “if I’d known all I had to do was ask...”

Marta looked at him archly, despite the way her heart felt like it was being rung out like a dishrag. She had told him to ask. She had told him to ask, and he did. 

Following orders. Listening to her. 

He smiled. There was nothing quite like the way Ransom Drysdale smiled when he really meant it: a slow slide, unfolding layers, pink lips and wrinkles around his eyes. 

The tattoo of Marta’s heartbeat was permanent and bold. She wanted to take his hands in hers, but her feet wouldn’t move across the scrubby gray carpet—and in any case, she didn’t know if she could. If she  _ would.  _

He wanted her to, though. That much Marta was certain of. 

“You look lovely,” Ransom said. Shockingly unlike him.

But he wasn’t laughing at her. He wasn’t laughing at her at all. Marta was wearing an old sweater and her most comfortable pair of jeans, and Ransom was being honest. 

A huff of air from him, a self-deprecating tip of his head. “And terrified.”

“I’m not terrified,” said Marta immediately. Her hands were in fists at her sides; she relaxed them. She was not scared of Ransom. “I’m nervous.” And then, when she registered the heat in her cheeks, when the rest of what he had said caught up with her: “Thank you.”

He looked… tired. 

She didn’t say that. 

“Nervous,” said Ransom, like he didn’t quite believe that was all of it. 

Well, it was: Marta would lie if she needed to, but there wasn’t anywhere to throw up in this bare room. 

“Should I sit?” Marta asked. 

“If you like,” said Ransom, gentle for reasons that Marta didn’t understand. 

She crossed the room on feet which were more reluctant than any of the rest of her. There was a chair directly across from Ransom, and one beside him: Marta sat beside him, and felt thrillingly brave. 

Ransom watched her do it with his breath held. 

“I’m halfway through reading all of Harlan’s books,” said Marta, striving for normalcy. She was surprised by now natural it felt. 

Ransom’s eyebrows rose. Genuine admiration, she thought. “That’s a lot of words,” he said. 

“Well.” Marta crossed her legs. The toe of her sneaker was very close to his shin. “I’ve got a lot of time.”

His hands had moved from his knees to the table, and they were clasped together up here, fingers woven between each other loosely. “That’s right,” he said, looking at her, looking at her. “Empty house, you said.”

It wasn’t a question, but Marta chose to answer it as such. 

“Alicia’s still in school,” she said. She rested her own hands on the table, inches from his. Her heart beat. There. “And Mama finally moved in with the man she’s been seeing for years. I don’t… I don’t think I’d mind all the emptiness so much if the house weren’t so big. I don’t think I’d mind being alone if there wasn’t so much space to be alone in.”

Ransom tipped his head. “You didn’t tell any of the help to stay on?”

“No,  _ Hugh, _ ” Marta said, annoyance flickering to life behind her breastbone. Ransom was Ransom, and she forgot that sometimes. It didn’t matter if he’d apologized or not. “Nobody wanted to keep working there after what you did, and I certainly wasn’t going to make them.”

He sent her a cringing smile. Annoyed, obviously: repentant too, though. 

Not because he thought it was wrong. But because he knew she did. 

Marta wanted to hit him sometimes. 

“Please don’t call me that,” he said. 

“Don’t call  _ them  _ that.”

One corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other. A truce, then. 

Eery, how well they understood each other. 

“Will you hire anyone else?”

She felt the tension that had sprung into her shoulders relax, bit by bit. 

“Security, maybe,” she admitted, and Ransom was sitting forward in his seat before the words had even left Marta’s mouth, alarm in all the solid lines of him. 

“What’s going on? Are you ok?”

A terrible thing: 

He cared about her, and Marta knew, and it made Marta warm in a place that was too deep in her chest not to be afraid of. 

“I’m ok,” she said. It was her turn for that gentle tone of voice. It tugged at the air around them, pulled them closer to each other. She couldn’t resist— “Just. Well. There’s nobody up there but me and the dogs, and your family is nothing if not persistent.”

“Send ‘em in here,” he said tightly. He might’ve lost weight, but he still had that personally-trained physique that he’d always boasted. “I’ll take care of the fuckers.”

All of that well-funded bravado. He didn’t know what it meant to fight someone for someone else, not really. Or he hadn’t, not before prison.

Learning. Marta thought that he was learning. 

“Bad idea.” Marta gestured at the faded ridge of scar tissue at his hairline, silver-pink and even. Leftover from Walt’s cane. Leftover from the first fight Ransom had fought. At least partly for her. 

He rolled his eyes. She smiled. 

“Fine,” he said. “But I know what I’m doing when I get outta here.”

The guard by the door shifted. 

“ _ Not  _ beating up my family,” said Ransom, pointing at the guard with an angle in his lips that reminded everyone in the room just what an asshole he really was. “That is  _ not  _ what I’m gonna do.”

“No,” said Marta. She didn’t want to smile—he was awful—but she did.

She directed it at the guard until he settled back against the wall. The smile was there; might as well use it. 

She looked at Ransom. “No, it isn’t.”

He grinned back at her. Handsome and shameless and tired and trapped.

“Harlan should have left you the contact information for the security he used during his book tours,” he said at last. “They’re good. And I don’t think they liked any of us, so they’ll fall in love with you.”

Marta nodded. “I’ll call them,” she said. 

“Promise?”

Marta thought about Ransom hitting that man from the diner. Marta thought about Ransom on his knees: his moonlight-stained skin, the devotion in his eyes. 

“I promise,” she said quietly. 

There must have been something in her voice. The space around his eyes softened, and his hands moved like butterfly wings, like they wanted to reach out and touch her. He was an assemblage of contradicting parts: wild and wilted and yearning.

Eery. How much she understood him. 

“Marta—” began Ransom, voice stuck somewhere in his throat. 

The guard by the door was restless. There wasn’t a clock in here, but Marta knew their time must have been ending. 

“You’ve got to leave,” said Ransom. 

“Yes,” said Marta.

She stood. Ransom stood with her, and suddenly they were close, and Marta could practically feel the heat of him, and she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. 

“Thank you for coming, Marta,” he said, so strangely polite. 

Marta felt disturbingly like crying. “If I come again, would you want to see me?”

He wasn’t smiling. “I always want to see you,” he murmured.

Maybe that should have surprised her. 

It didn’t. 

Marta touched the bit of his wrist that she could see beneath shock-orange sleeve. His skin was warm, and his pulse was fast. 

“Call me if you’re bored,” Marta murmured, and then she turned away. 

  
  
  


Marta pulled her knees to her chest, nestling back into the big armchair in her study. She called her sister. 

“Hi,” said Alicia, sounding distracted. There was a lot of background noise: car horns, wind, the babble of late-night partygoers. “Make it quick, I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“I think we’re friends,” said Marta. 

She had thought it before. She’d never said it aloud, though. It shocked her all over again. 

Alicia was silent. 

“He and I,” Marta said, pressing a hand over her heart. It hadn’t stopped beating like this since yesterday. Since she saw him. “I… I don’t know what else to call it. Us.”

“You had better not be talking,” said Alicia, clipped and precise, “about that damned white boy.”

Marta’s turn not to speak. Alicia knew who Marta was talking about. 

“Oh my god,” said Alicia flatly. 

Marta bit her lip hard, hard enough that she tasted blood. 

“Did he finally call you?” Alicia asked. 

Marta had broken down and told Alicia about talking to Ransom on the phone, about driving him across the state, about waking up the next morning to find him gone. Alicia had not been impressed. 

She kept talking now. About the phone call, about going to see him. About the strange kindredness she felt with him, the way she knew him and he knew her. 

“Marta,” Alicia said softly, “he’s manipulating you. He’s… terrible.”

“Oh.” Marta laughed, and tried to ignore the wetness in her eyes. “I know. That doesn’t change anything. I  _ know him, _ Alicia.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Marta shook her head, even though nobody was here to see her. It was dark outside, and she didn’t have any lights on in the study: only the candle on her desk shed any light into the room. Somewhere outside in all of those shadows, one of the dogs was baying. 

“I don’t know,” Marta whispered. Abruptly, she felt her gut heave: she closed her eyes tight, and clenched her jaw. “I—I’m going to see him again.”

“Jesus,” Alicia breathed. “If he lays one fucking finger on you—”

“He won’t,” said Marta. She was so sure of this. She was so sure of this that it was almost scary. 

_ “Jesus, _ ” said Alicia again, right on the edge of hysterical. “God, Marta, don’t fucking—don’t fucking fall in love with him.”

And Marta had absolutely, entirely no idea what to say to that. 

She kept her mouth shut. 

“Be careful,” said Alicia, after the silence had lasted so long that it meant more than any words Marta might have said. Alicia was always saying that lately. Always having to watch out for Marta, her older sister. “He doesn’t deserve you. And he isn’t good. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“He won’t hurt me,” Marta said quietly. She thought she was crying now: she didn’t want to check. “He doesn’t want to. And even if he did, all I’d have to do is tell him not to.”

“Oh, Marta,” Alicia breathed. “Oh god.”

  
  
  


Summer turned to fall, and Marta didn’t visit him again. 

He called her, though, and she answered. It was different this time: none of that secrecy that had existed before his parole. There was nobody around to hear Marta speaking to him, anyway. 

“Did you hire security?” Ransom asked her one late afternoon. 

Marta was outside on the balcony, blanket around her shoulders to ward off the chill, mug of coffee steaming between her hands. The leaves had been steadily turning for a few months; now, in the blaze of sunlight, her property was awash with an amber glow. 

Ransom had always looked good out here. His dark hair, his trickingly-soft sweaters. His stupid, beautiful camel coat. 

“Yes,” said Marta. She’d been reluctant to: the men were tall, broader than Ransom, tight-lipped and unsmiling: she didn’t know if they would respect a woman, especially one of her background. “It’s going alright so far.”

“So far?”

Marta half-smiled. It was difficult to hide things from him. 

“I’m a woman,” Marta said at last, settling for the simplest version of a complicated answer. “And they are almost all white men. I’ve learned to be cautious.”

Ransom was quiet. She knew he was thinking. 

“Do you anticipate there’ll be trouble with them?” he asked at last. 

“I don’t expect so,” she said. They’d been working for her for almost a month, and Marta hadn’t seen anything other than the desire to do their job. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Yeah,” he said, faded like he was still lost in thought. 

They settled into comfortable silence. This was usual for them: these periods of no talking, of just existing with each other—side by side yet so far away. 

Marta settled her elbows on the balcony railing. Tipped her face up toward the sun, and closed her eyes. 

Her cheeks warmed. 

Above Marta, a flock of geese wheeled their way across the sky, raspy calls loud and erratic, headed for someplace warm to spend the winter. 

Flight, and freedom, and the search for warmth. Things that Marta Cabrera thought about. 

“How are you?” Marta asked him, and then before he could answer: “Don’t lie.”

She knew he was smiling over there, where he was. 

“I’m still bored,” he said. “At least that’s the simplest word for it. I’m. There’s nobody to talk to.”

“You’re alone?”

“Yeah… I never used to mind being alone.”

Marta opened her eyes. Marta listened. 

“Thought I didn’t, anyway.” He took a moment to breathe. Marta let him. “It was nice when I was a kid, ‘cause Linda and Richard were always fighting when I was home, and being alone meant I didn’t have to hear that. And then I went to school, and I’m an asshole so I didn’t have any friends other than the kids that were smart enough to know that sticking with me might get them somewhere, and being alone there meant… hell, I don’t know. An absence of guilt, I guess. No way to be a prick if there’s nobody around to be a prick to.” 

Marta could see it. See him. Ransom: young and angry and privileged and full of hate. Brought up by two people who didn’t love each other and didn’t love him. Taught to fight fire with fire, to become a monster in order to survive the monstrous. 

She took a sip of coffee. Felt it lodge in her throat. 

“I’ve lived alone since I left college,” he said. He laughed: shameful and stuck. “I bought a house so fucking close to Grandpa, closer than any of the rest of his family lived, and it wasn’t because I thought he might need me, it wasn’t because I’m kind, it was—because I was scared. To go out on my own, to make a life for myself. Because he was the only one who cared about me. I could have come over and visited him any time I wanted to and he never would’ve turned me away, but I didn’t. Said I liked that fucking place, with its glass walls. Said I liked only needing to care about myself.” Another laugh. His default. It hurt Marta to hear. “Shit. Maybe that part was the truth.”

Marta wished that she could see him. 

“You don’t like it though,” she said softly. The paint on the railing was chipped. Jagged and crumbling beneath her fingers. “Being alone.”

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” he said instead of answering. He sounded angry. Harsh with it. Scared. “Fuck me. Sorry. It’s stupid.”

“Ransom,” said Marta. That tone of voice he always listened to. It caught him, when she said his name. “It isn’t stupid.”

She listened to the sound of his breath. More eloquent than words. 

Slow, but with a hitch in the middle. 

“I don’t think I mind being alone,” he said at last _. “ _ I think I just hate being lonely.”

That was something Marta understood well. 

None of what he’d just told her excused any of what he had done. It did offer an explanation. One that cut. 

She took a few deep breaths. Matching them to Ransom’s. 

“Was this all just a ploy to get me to come see you again?”

This time when he laughed it swung up a little too loud and a little too loose, slightly unmoored. Relief, Marta thought. “Yeah, Marta,” he said. “You caught me.”

“Well.” Sun-warmed wood beneath her hands. The bite of fall in the air, tucking itself through the knit of her blanket. Coffee, slowly cooling. “It’s what I expect from you.”

She wondered if he could hear her smile, nestled away in the corners of her voice. 

“Smart,” he said, and oh, there: she could hear his. 

  
  
  


It had been two years since Harlan’s party. 

Since Harlan died. 

Marta put Harlan’s favorite record on and sat in the downstairs library where she did most of her business. She spent the day of his death sending money to his family members. Signing checks and writing letters, making it clear that she would not be leaving, but that she would take care of them. For Harlan. 

And then, when the sun had dipped below the tree line, Marta curled up in her study with a half-read copy of  _ The Needle Game _ . Just like Harlan would have wanted her to. 

  
  
  


Mama hosted Christmas at her place, and even though it was tiny, the whole party packed themselves inside. 

Mama’s boyfriend was a tall man with dark kind eyes and a loud laugh. He’d waited with patient understanding for her for ten years: and as soon as Marta stepped foot inside their apartment, as soon as she saw the way he smiled at her mother when she wasn’t looking, Marta knew she wasn’t ever going to wish Mama still lived in that big austere house again. 

There were at least three families there. It was loud, bright with Christmas colors: Marta was grateful when Alicia’s eyes met hers across the room, when Alicia pulled her to the side with a smile. 

They hugged for a long time. Marta never realized how much she missed her sister until she saw her again. 

Alicia pulled back a little. They were in the kitchen, the only mostly-empty place. 

“I have to give you your gift,” she said. 

Marta laughed. “Now? Before everyone else?”

“Now,” confirmed Alicia, and rummaged around in the big tote bag she was holding. She pulled out a long rectangular package: flat, with a crooked bow. 

“I want you to know that I trust you,” Alicia said quietly as Marta peeled back cheerful-patterned paper. “Even if I don’t trust  _ him. _ ”

It was a Go board. 

Marta’s eyes stung. 

Alicia folded her into a hug, the angles of the board sharp between them. Marta didn’t bother trying not to cry this time. 

“I love you,” Alicia said. “And I want you to be happy. Even if your version of happy is different than mine.”

“Thank you,” Marta said. “You’re a good sister.”

“And you’re a badass,” said Alicia. She looked at Marta. They were both tearful, and they laughed about it, right there in their mother’s kitchen. “Now go show him who’s boss.”

“Oh,” Marta grinned, holding the board tight, “he already knows.”

  
  
  


“Hi,” said Marta, standing with the Go board tucked under one arm. 

He was standing too: one hand on the back of a chair, like he’d been waiting for her this whole time. He was smiling a little. “Hi,” Ransom said. 

His wrists were unbruised today. The collar of his uniform was open a little, sitting crookedly on his clavicle. His hair had grown out some from the closely-shorn style Marta was used to seeing on him: it looked soft without any product in it. Disarmingly so. 

“Want to play Go?” Marta asked. 

“Hey,” said Ransom, and the corners of his mouth were gentle. “You know you’re in charge.”

Marta thought of her darkened driveway. 

“Yes,” she said. 

They sat side by side again. Not conducive to playing board games; but Marta found she wasn’t willing to sacrifice this closeness for anything. 

Ransom watched her as she set up the board, one elbow propped on the edge of the table. Content to let her arrange things. 

“Just a warning,” said Marta mildly, not lifting her gaze. She didn’t need to: she could feel him looking at her anyway. “I’m damn good.”

Ransom sat forward, taking his turn after her first move. “That’s what he told me,” he said, a laugh buried somewhere between those words. 

No hint of bitterness. Marta realized abruptly that Ransom didn’t  _ quite  _ believe that she could beat him. 

Well. She’d prove him wrong. 

The first game was over in a couple of minutes. Patterns. It was easy. 

Ransom blinked down at the board, and then up at her. “Fuck me with a spoon,” he said. 

Marta smiled. 

They reset the board. They started again. 

Somehow, they’d moved a little closer over the course of the game. Marta’s foot was close to his on the floor: she let herself shift, let her foot slide forward until it was pressed up against his. Aligned, unequivocally intentional. 

“I’m unsettlingly good at this,” Marta said halfway through. 

Ransom rolled his eyes. His smile still lurked. 

In this position, it was the natural thing for Marta to stretch out her legs, lean against him a little—and then one of his ankles was trapped between hers, and their knees were bumping together, and he was warm against her, warm and solid. 

“Marta,” said Ransom, voice unsteady and thin. He was watching her with eyes that were wider than usual, and this close, the fan of his eyelashes was impossible to look away from. “That’s not fair.”

“Pay attention to the game,” said Marta, still mild, still even. She sounded much calmer than she actually was: her heart was throbbing, tight and overtaxed, and even though they weren’t skin to skin she could still feel all of that bright vivid heat of him. 

Ransom swallowed. It shoved down his throat thickly. He didn’t seem annoyed, but only because he was breathless. 

She hoped all of this didn’t make her a bad person. This tingling delight she got sweeping through her stomach, at the evidence of what she could do to him so easily. 

Each of them lowered their gazes once more. They went back to the game. Marta won again. 

Ransom stared at the board, brow furrowed. 

Marta caught the laugh inside her before it could cut loose. 

He came from a long line of people who liked nothing less than losing. She’d been reminded of that when he tried to kill Harlan. She was reminded of it again sitting in front of a board game that he’d played since childhood. 

“Again,” said Ransom, already resetting his pieces. He stopped. Looked at her: soft-light eyelashes, childish eagerness in the corners of his mouth. Marta wondered when the last time he and Harlan had played this was. “If that’s alright?”

Ransom Drysdale, asking for permission. A sight she never thought she’d see. 

Marta nodded at him.  _ Giving _ permission. He seemed to relax a little once she did. 

They played three more times. Ransom managed to beat her somewhere in the middle—he was endearingly proud of himself—but Marta kept her streak up. 

“Go ahead,” Ransom said as Marta packed up the board and all its pieces. Her head was bent, face hidden behind her hair, but just as Marta understood his body language, Ransom knew hers. “Laugh. I don’t mind.”

She was smiling before she even met his eyes. When she saw the expression on his face—wryly amused, a burnished kind of embarrassment, a fondness that made her heart beat rabbit-quick—she let out the laugh she’d been holding for nearly an hour. 

Marta let the table hold her up. She leaned against it with both elbows, her chin in her hands. Ransom’s foot was still trapped between her ankles, and he hadn’t tried to pull away, and she didn’t think he would. 

“You’re good, though,” Marta said. A consolation prize, but that didn’t make it any less true. “But I’m—” 

“You’re just wonderful?” Ransom said, and arched an eyebrow. 

“Well,” said Marta. There he was: hands on the table, so accessible, so inviting. “Yes.”

He was smiling at her. It was rare that he wasn’t, now. “We both learned from the best,” he said quietly. 

She did it. She dropped one hand, and when it landed, it landed on top of his. 

He went rigid for half a second—less than that—and then he melted forward in his chair. 

“We did,” said Marta.

Quiet. This was what they were good at: speaking between the things they said out loud. 

Here they were. Marta’s hand pressed over the back of his, against tendon and warm skin and slender bone. Marta’s fingers draped over the turn of his wrist, curved under, touching veins that beat fast with the pulse of blood. 

“I get why he loved you so much,” Ransom said. 

Marta looked up. Her heart was right at the back of her throat. 

“I never got it,” he said. Lips tight with—something. “Not at first. I’d watch you when I came over, the way you talked to him and made sure everything went well, and I just… he liked you better than me, so I hated you.”

“I know,” she said softly. Sometimes she’d be standing in the corner of a room, hoping to go unobserved, smiling at Harlan when he made a joke for her sake, or said something kind, and then she’d just—she’d feel it. Ransom’s eyes on her, hot like a brand. Burning through her skin. “I could tell.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ransom. He shrugged when he said it. Half ready to make it into a joke if she didn’t accept. “I get it now.”

He moved to pull his hand back when she didn’t answer. Marta tightened her grip on him fast, holding his wrist in place with her fingers and the weight of her palm. 

Ransom stopped. He let her hold onto him and Marta did, knowing he could get away easily if he really wanted to.

“He loved you too,” Marta said. She didn’t know if it was the right thing to say, but she was going to say it anyway. “You know that.”

Another shrug. Much less sure of itself. 

“He always—” Marta stopped. Took a deep breath, and hated the hitch in the middle. She wanted to lean forward into Ransom all the way, but she didn’t. “He used to say he thought you and I would be friends. If you could ever get your head out of your ass.”

She smiled at the memory. The first time Harlan had said that, she’d scoffed so loudly that Harlan had laughed for hours. 

“What did you say?”

Marta ran her index finger right along the edge of Ransom’s jumpsuit cuff, and he shivered very slightly. She laughed. “I told him he was crazy.”

He wasn’t smiling, now. Marta thought of that day he’d shown up on her doorstep, the way she’d been able to see his pulse in his throat. She saw it now. Leaping beneath orange fabric. 

“Are we…” his voice stopped in the middle of the sentence, trailing away into nothing. 

_ I think we’re friends.  _

Marta nodded. “Yeah,” she said, barely a whisper.

She had forgotten that there was anyone else in this room but them. She remembered now: a guard leaning forward from the wall, suspicious of their quietness, of their closeness. 

Ransom didn’t appear to comprehend it. He was looking at her so closely that she thought he might tip forward another inch and crawl inside her. The shadows around his eyes were dove-gray. 

“You got your head out of your ass,” Marta said. She raised her voice a little. Breaking tension. Relieving suspicion. Easing that frown away. He had plenty of things to frown at himself about; this wasn’t one of them. “At least part way.”

That got a laugh. Small, soundless, but she watched his chest rise with it. 

“Don’t you just hate how he was always right?” Ransom asked. There wasn’t any anger in the way he spoke of Harlan. He sounded almost wistful. 

He didn’t have any right to that wistfulness. None at all. But Marta had never claimed to understand the human heart, and she wouldn’t begin now. 

“I don’t,” she said softly. “Hate that. No.”

Ransom’s smile grew so slowly. A gentle unfurling. “Nah,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”

She should have stopped touching him minutes ago. Now she knew what he felt like against her. Now she had the terrifying aliveness of his hand beneath hers to remember. To miss. 

  
  
  


“Alright,” said Blanc, his hands in the pockets of his slacks as he stood on the ridge of the hill. “We need to have a chat about motives.”

Marta’s feet were slipping on the grass. It was yellow, dead from months of snow and rain and snow again; now it was crushed under a thin layer of dirty gray slush. 

“What could possibly convince someone to burn a whole family in their beds?” Blanc mused. 

She took a few steps further. Shoved her hands in her own pockets, mirroring Blanc’s stance as she followed his gaze. 

Marta had agreed to meet Blanc half an hour from her house at the sight of a fairly grizzly murder. This felt big of her. She had never come to Blanc to help him with a case. She had always asked him—and whatever evidence he could muster—to come to her.

But she was winning the lawsuit the Thrombeys had brought up against her, and none of them had come to the house to threaten her for a long time now. 

And she was going stir-crazy. 

“Motives...” The wind was brisk, and thankfully blowing downhill from them. It carried the charred smell of the house and its three burned residents with it. “There’s always money.” She laughed. “Although maybe I’m biased from our murder mystery.”

Blanc raised an eyebrow. “No, Miss Cabrera, I am regretful to inform you that money often motivates people to do things they never thought they would. Even people who aren’t your Ransom.”

_ Your Ransom.  _

Marta did her best to ignore that pronoun. It didn’t work. She felt her face getting hotter the longer she tried to put it out of her mind. 

She hoped Blanc didn’t notice, but knew that he did. Those eyes didn’t miss a thing. 

“Yes,” Marta said, and set off down the hill toward the scene of the crime, just to give herself something to do. The wind felt good on her cheeks. God, she was a mess. “Well.”

She heard Blanc’s feet crunching the smothered grass behind her. “Well indeed,” he murmured. 

  
  
  


Spring came, and Alicia showed up at Marta’s house. 

“You really want to spend spring break here?” Marta asked, even as she pulled her sister close. “Not at the beach with friends? I’m not fun. I don’t even think I have beer in the house.”

Alicia grinned at her, pulling the door shut firmly. She dropped her duffel bag on the floor next to the suitcase she’d already set there. “That’s ok,” she said. “We’ll talk about boys and girls and hot people.”

That sounded dangerous. 

“Gossip,” said Marta, bending to grab Alicia’s discarded luggage. She led the way down the hall to the bedroom Alicia always slept in when she stayed over, and Alicia followed with a laugh. “Didn’t Mama teach you anything?”   


“Mama taught me that I should encourage my sister to talk about her love life.”

“Your sister has nothing to say about her love life.” Technically not a lie. No, definitely not a lie. Marta hadn’t been on a date in months. And nothing else counted. 

Nothing else counted. She repeated it to herself, just in case it hadn’t sunk in the first time. 

Marta tossed Alicia’s things onto the bed, and they bounced gratifyingly. 

Alicia was staring at her when she turned around, eyebrows up, obviously fighting to hold in a laugh. 

“What?” Marta asked. She was being too defensive. She couldn’t stop. “Alicia there’s nothing to talk about—”

Alicia softened slightly. “Ok,” she said, and stepped forward, and slipped her arm around Marta’s shoulders. “Fine. Nothing to talk about.”

She shouldn’t have gotten worked up. Marta  _ knew  _ that; knew there was nothing to get worked up about. 

Still. 

Still, she couldn’t shake the tightness in her chest. The person she thought of when Alicia said things like that was—was— 

“What’s that baking show you like?” Alicia asked. They’d settled in the living room, squished together on the couch. Marta navigated to the channel, and closed her eyes as she forced her breath to slow down. 

  
  
  


“I want to meet him,” Alicia said. 

Marta didn’t drop the carton of eggs she was holding, but only because it was almost already sitting on the counter. 

“He’s in prison,” she said finally. 

Marta didn’t have to ask who  _ he _ was. 

Marta knew who  _ he  _ was. 

Alicia rolled her eyes. They were in the wide big kitchen, and the spring sunlight filtering in through the windows caught her hair. “You go see him all the time,” she said. “Take me with you.”

“You don’t like him.”

“No,” said Alicia honestly. “I don’t. But you do.”

Marta opened her mouth to argue. 

Marta found that she couldn’t. Not without her stomach clenching. 

They were friends—no. They were something more than that. Something closer than friends, something that didn’t have its own word. And he was not kind and he was not good and he was privileged and he was an attempted murderer—and she liked him. 

He had apologized to her. He had called her, he had showed up on her front porch. He had punched a man for her, and he had stopped when she told him to. He was terrible and she understood him, they understood each other. 

He was trying. Harder than Marta had ever seen a person try at anything. 

“He’s funny,” Marta said. Her hands shook. She gripped them right to stop it. “You’ll like that about him.”

Alicia would. If she could get past her well-founded hatred of Ransom. 

Marta knew that Ransom would like Alicia. 

Alicia brightened. “So you’ll take me to see him?” 

“I… he has to call me first. He always calls me before I go, so I know if it’s ok to come down or not.”

He’d never once asked her not to come. Not a single time. 

Ransom Drysdale was lonely, that much was obvious. But he always seemed particularly eager to see Marta. 

“That sounds like a really asshole-ish thing to do,” Alicia said. “But ok.”

Marta went back to her eggs. She didn’t bother to dispute that. Alicia wouldn’t quite understand the way she and Ransom operated. Marta was fairly sure that nobody ever would. 

  
  
  


“How do you feel about visitors?” 

A pause. 

It was later that afternoon, and Ransom had called her just like usual. Marta sat in her study between her cases of books, the window by her head cracked open so she could feel the spring breeze shuffling through. 

“Visitors,” repeated Ransom. He was musing. “Plural.”

She didn’t know why she was so nervous about this. About Ransom and Alicia meeting. About Ransom and Alicia meeting and either getting along or… not. 

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was quiet. She was sure he could tell how she felt. “I—well. Alicia. Is home for spring break. 

“Ah,” said Ransom slowly. “Um.”

“She doesn’t like you,” said Marta. 

“No shit,” he said dryly.

“Which I understand. I mean. She only knows you as the guy who maybe sort of tried to kill her sister.”

“Yeah, Marta, I think I got it,” he said. 

They were quiet. Marta rubbed that place between her eyebrows that had been tight with tension ever since this morning. 

She took a breath. “But I—” 

She stopped. 

“But  _ I  _ like you,” she said finally. Her voice was so low she could barely hear her own words. 

Breathing patterns. Inhales, exhales, the waver of all his quiet noises across the line. 

“And she’s my sister,” Marta added. So quiet. “She wants to…”

“To come say glare at me and sit between us?” He was wry. 

She didn’t blame him. Alicia and Ransom were two of the most stubborn people Marta knew, next to herself. 

She’d get them to like each other or die trying. 

“Yeah,” she admitted. “Probably. At least at first.”

Ransom took a minute to answer. “Do you want her to come with you?”

Did she? Alicia was loud and opinionated and fiercely protective. Ransom was an asshole. 

She closed her eyes, let her head fall back. Jesus Christ. 

“Yes,” she said. “Yeah. Ransom. I do.”

He didn’t laugh at her, or scoff. 

“Ok,” he said. “Bring her over,”

“Are you sure?” 

“Listen,” he said, warm, and for a second Marta forgot they weren’t sitting side by side. “When I say whatever you want I mean it. Yeah?”

Marta smiled against the cupped palm of her hand. “I know,” she said. “I do.”

Just— 

“And in case you’re worrying, which you probably are, because you’re kind,” he said, “you can’t possibly force me to do anything I don’t want to do because I, uh.” He cleared his throat. His voice had gone gruff. “I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t enjoy, so long as you told me to do it.”

Oh. 

“I want you to meet my sister again, and I want you to get along with her.” Marta’s lungs and her heart and her pulse and her breath. A wavering, fever-hopeful tangle. “And then I want you to get out, and I want to see you, here in my house, and I want it to be legal this time. No turning yourself in, no getting caught. I want—”

But this next want got caught. Lodged. Too much to say.

“You got it, Marta,” he said. Tender-bruised words, soft as anything. Marta thought about their legs woven together beneath a round table, the pliable give of his wrist bones beneath the pressure of her hand. Utter trust. “Whatever you want.”

A heartbeat between them. Two. Three. 

Harlan’s books gazed down at her. Jewel-bright covers. Well read pages. 

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Lookin’ forward to it,” he murmured. 

She kept the phone pressed to her ear until she heard the click on his end. A signal that the line was dead. 

  
  
  


“Do you think he’ll be a dick to me? I know he’s not a dick to you but you’re, like, a goddess, so.”

Marta’s palms were sweating. Actually sweating. She wiped them on her thighs, grooved corduroy a soothing texture against her skin.

“No,” said Marta. She was an assemblage of nerves. Their footsteps seemed very loud as the usual guard led them down the hallway. “I told him not to be.”

Alicia snorted. “And you think that’ll work?” Then as she caught the expression on Marta’s face: “ _ Jesus _ , Marta.”

“Just be civil to him,” Marta said before they went in. “Please. Just try.”

Alicia kissed her on the cheek. “After you, sis.”

He was sitting when they entered. At their usual table. His eyes met Marta’s, and he stood, hands neatly clasped before him. 

He smiled at her. Small, and reassuringly nervous as well. 

“Hey,” he murmured when Marta got close. He made no move to touch her, but his smile got warm and his eyes were blue. 

Marta wanted to reach up and touch that bump in the otherwise perfect line of his nose. “Hi,” she said, a little ragged. 

Ransom looked at her for a second more. It was maybe a good thing they weren’t alone: otherwise Marta might have closed the remaining distance between them. That distance which felt so surmountably slim. 

His gaze slid to Alicia. The warmth dropped and the nerves doubled, but the smile was polite. 

“Hello, Miss Cabrera,” he said. “Thanks for dropping by.”

Alicia was standing close behind Marta, stance wide, arms crossed over her chest. She looked protective and fierce and strangely young. 

“It’s just Alicia,” she said. She glanced at Marta and then back at him. She seemed a little out of her depth. “Thanks for not banning me.”

He tipped his head. “Well,” Ransom said evenly. He hadn’t unclasped his hands or come any closer. The whole front of him was unprotected. Demure and exposed and almost submissive. “Marta asked me to.”

An eyebrow arched. “Asked or told?”

“O _ k,”  _ said Marta. Probably too loud. Her face was hot, but Ransom’s—Ransom’s was a bright, angry pink. The color made her stomach fill with heat. “Let’s sit down please.”

They did. Alicia on one side of the table, Ransom on the other. 

Marta in between. 

Alicia was smirking. 

Ransom’s flush clashed loudly with his orange jumpsuit. 

Marta took a deep breath, and it shuddered in her lungs. 

Both pairs of eyes turned toward her. 

“I don’t have to bribe anyone to let me in here anymore,” Marta said, desperate for a change in subject. She looked at Ransom. “My restraining order against you ended last month, so they aren’t breaking the law by letting me in.”

Ransom’s brow wrinkled, which was definitely not the reaction she’d expected. “Shouldn’t you renew that?” he asked. “Request an extension? I mean. I’m not. A great guy.”

The blush was still vivid. Marta wanted to take some time and appreciate it but now Alicia was talking. 

“She has no sense of self-preservation,” Alicia said, rolling her eyes. “Why do you think she never told you to fuck off in the first place?”

“Hey—” Marta began. 

Ransom was still frowning. Hell, now they both were. 

This had been a bad idea. 

“You should renew it,” he said. “And double the security up at your place.”

“That’s what  _ I’ve  _ been saying!” 

“Guys—what the hell?” Marta glared at them. Alicia raised an eyebrow back in defiance, and Ransom just looked at her. 

She sighed. 

“I have told him to fuck off before,” she said to Alicia. Her stomach heaved, and she swallowed, holding her breath until it settled. “Just not in those exact words.”

“Sure,” Alicia said. 

“And Ransom.” She turned to him. Those blue eyes. “Are you ever going to hurt me intentionally?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

Her foot was pressed to his beneath the table again. A secret closeness that only they shared. 

“Right,” she said. “That’s why I’m not renewing the restraining order.”

Pink on the tips of his ears, on the sharp ridge of cheekbones. Fading into rose.

She smiled at him. 

“Now please don’t ever tell me how to live my life again unless I’ve asked you to.”

He blinked at her, slow and soft the way he got sometimes. His smile was too much for her to look at, so she looked at Alicia instead. 

Alicia was staring at them with huge eyes. “Wow.”

It was so strange to have her here. A third party witness to every odd thing that Marta and Ransom did; to the clockwork-easy way they communicated, absolute and unfailing and secret. It might be very strange, Marta realized, to be an outsider looking in. 

At least Alicia and Ransom were getting along. 

Unified in their front to protect Marta. 

That said something. She wasn’t sure what. 

The three of them talked for a little while longer. About nothing, really: about Mama’s new apartment, about Alicia’s school, about her schedule next semester. 

It was so satisfyingly bland. No fights, no outbursts. By the time Alicia moved on to talking about the internship she’d done last summer, Ransom seemed actually interested. 

Marta was grateful to them both. 

“Do you remember the Fourth of July?” Alicia asked eventually. 

Marta looked at Ransom. She knew he did. 

He pressed his foot against hers. “How could I forget?”

Marta shook her head slightly, remembering. 

Sticky heat. Barbecue on the jewel-green back lawn. Harlan and the Thrombeys and the staff and their families, everyone in various states of tipsiness due to the potent mixed drinks Fran had been whipping up all afternoon. 

And Ransom. Ransom, in a soft white t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders and chest and arms. 

He’d been so strangely interactive that day. Playing any game Harlan had encouraged, sitting with the families outside instead of disappearing back into the house. 

Staring at Marta across too-long grass. 

“Mafia,” said Alicia. “That’s what we played. You were an asshole.”

“Mafia,” Ransom echoed now. “What a dumb as shit game.”

His words were offhand, but he was looking at Marta like he was remembering the same thing she was. The way he’d made fun of her all night. Said borderline-rude things to Alicia and Mama, just to see Marta glare. 

By the time they’d gotten around to mafia Marta had been so tired of Ransom’s cocky assuredness that nobody would catch him cheating, and the too-close too-hot too-intent gaze on her skin and the awful words that all her self control had fled. 

All she’d wanted was for him to feel a little of the shame he and his family forced up her and her family every day. 

“I just wanted you to lose,” she said to him now. 

Ransom was already looking at her, but those words drew Alicia’s gaze as well. 

Yes. Ransom was definitely remembering the same things as well. She wondered if he’d try to apologize. 

“I just wanted you to tell me to stop,” he said. 

And there—shame of a different sort. Shame that came out in red bright cheeks and shaking hands.

She didn’t make him hate her. That was an important distinction. 

He’d gotten worse and worse that day, until finally he was so unbearable that Marta had forgotten about her gag reflex and lied, just to see him lose the game. 

He  _ had  _ lost. Right before Marta turned around and threw up on her own shoes. 

“I was really mad at you,” Alicia said. 

Ransom looked away from Marta. Sent Alicia a smile. Small, but there. “You had every right to be.”

She blinked at him. Taken aback. 

“Damn right,” she said. 

Alicia had yelled at him and he’d yelled back, and then he’d stormed off to his beemer and driven away, even though he’d been in no state to be behind the wheel. Marta had always been a little surprised he hadn’t gotten into an accident that night. 

“Marta wasn’t mad,” Alicia said. 

“Marta’s a saint,” he replied quietly.

Alicia’s eyes narrowed. She was clearly testing him; he didn’t look like he couldn’t take it, so Marta sat back. 

“You don’t deserve her,” she said. “Nobody does.”

Ransom swallowed. Marta watched his throat bob, and then she watched the flutter of his eyelashes. “I know that, too,” he murmured. 

They stared at each other across the table. Marta’s sister and Marta’s friend. The woman who had always been on her side, and then man who had practically tried to kill her. 

“Ok,” said Alicia, sitting back. “Ok.”

Marta let out a sigh of relief, accidentally too loud, and that broke most of the tension in the room as the three of them began to laugh. 

“I’m gonna go wait in the car,” Alicia said eventually. She was looking between Ransom and Marta with an annoying level of knowingness. “I’m expecting a call. Ransom: walk me to the door?”

Ransom looked at Marta, eyebrows raised. Marta shrugged, but she nodded, too. 

“Be good,” she said. Not sure which one she was even speaking to.

Marta watched as Ransom and Alicia walked to the door of the room. Marta watched as Alicia got up on her toes and murmured something to Ransom, too soft for Marta to hear. Marta watched Ransom nod. 

A guard came and escorted Alicia away. 

Marta and Ransom were alone. 

He came back to the table. “I’m kinda scared of her,” he said. 

Ransom was standing, Marta had to tip her head back to see him. He noticed, and sat down. 

“She loves me,” Marta said. “And she doesn’t want me to get hurt.”

He tilted his chair until they faced each other. “Good girl,” he said. 

The lights were loud in here. Fluorescent, buzzing. Marta thought of the way the light at her house was always muted and round. Velvet soft. Ransom looked like an oil painting when he was there. 

He lifted his hand slightly, reaching out. Eyes lowered, lashes dark against his skin. Clearly bashful about it. 

If they were two different people she might have teased him for it. As it was Marta just took his hand between hers, fingers weaving through fingers, palms pressing to palms. His skin was cold, but hers was warm. 

Another aspect of their routine, strange and small and yet so much bigger than Marta ever would have thought. Something that they hadn’t done in front of anyone else yet. 

Marta would have to thank Alicia for taking that “call.”

“So Marta,” he said, breaking the silence with words that sounded more hesitant than he usually did. He still wasn’t looking her in the eyes. That was rare enough to put her on high alert. “I.”

The words stopped coming. Well, alright. She’d let him think. 

He knew what she was doing. The tilt of his lips was rueful when he finally looked at her, the blue of his eyes like the lake behind Marta’s house: deep and dark and hiding other things below the surface. 

“I’m up for parole again here in a few,” he said. 

She couldn’t tell how he felt about that. She couldn’t tell how  _ she  _ felt about that. “Oh,” she said quietly. 

A smallness to his shoulders. He didn’t hold himself how he used to: no puffed chest, no looming over her. Not like the Fourth of July. Not like anything from before prison. 

“I know Linda pulled some strings,” he said. It struck Marta suddenly that he never called anyone in his family anything but their first names. Not his mother, not his father. Not even Harlan, other than that day when he spoke to her about loneliness. The thought made her peculiarly sad. “I’ve, uh. Been good. So that, combined with her bribes... I’ll get out.”

He would. His family was rich and they wanted him out, so he’d get out. That was that. 

Now he was watching her. Watching her like a hawk: ready to soak up anything she gave him. 

What did she want to give him?

Marta’s heart was beating in her throat, but she talked past the thumping rhythm. “This time,” she said, “don’t let them send you to New York.”

His hand flexed between hers. His lips parted very slightly before he spoke. “You’re saying that I should stay in this state,” he said. “Where—where you live.”

“No restraining order, remember?” God, she was nervous. She shouldn’t be this nervous. They both obviously wanted the same thing: one of them just needed to  _ say it.  _ “I’d like it to be completely legal when you show up this time.”

Those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was a mess: half-nervous and half-jubilant, his hand shaking a little in hers. 

When he showed up, she would let him in. If he asked, she would let him stay. 

He was going to ask. Marta knew he was. 

She knew her allotted time was coming to a close. The guard was restless by the door, and the late afternoon light coming in through the window had dimmed; the shadow of the window bars upon the floor was dark. 

Marta stood, and Ransom stood with her. Just like always. 

She was still holding his hand. 

“It might be a long time,” Ransom said, “before I see you again.”

Nobody to watch them. The guard was pointedly looking away. 

Marta stepped forward, going up on her toes. She balanced herself with a hand on his shoulder, and she brushed her lips against his cheek. His beard was soft against her skin. 

The ghost of his fingers on her waist, steadying, timid. 

She let go of him. Stepped away. 

He was staring at her, eyes huge, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. He looked absolutely stunned. She would have laughed, if she could breathe. 

“Bye,” she whispered, and she left before she could touch him again. 

  
  
  


The car ride back was heavy with silence. Marta could feel Alicia’s eyes on her. 

She tried not to show how this whole day had rattled her. 

Marta parked at the top of her driveway. Neither of them got out. 

“Just say it,” she murmured. 

“That was,” Alicia began immediately, turning completely in her seat to face Marta, “so…”

She trailed off. If Alicia couldn’t find the words to describe something, then it must truly be remarkable. 

Marta shut her eyes tightly for a second. She was still clinging to the steering wheel with all the power in her hands; she let go, uncurling her fingers carefully. 

“I would say he doesn’t know how lucky he is,” Alicia mused, and her tone was softer. It was possible that Marta looked just as shaken as she felt. “But I just don’t think that’s true.”

Maybe it sounded conceited, but Marta agreed. She thought of that incident in the driveway. Of Ransom turning himself in. Of a thousand phone calls, a hundred visits. The way he smiled at her. 

“He’s getting out soon,” she said quietly. 

Alicia took a moment to answer. Finally she sighed. 

“I still think he should serve his full sentence,” she said. “But at least I’m not scared for you anymore. I think he’d go through a lot before he let anything hurt you. Including himself.”

Marta nodded. Swallowed. “I told him to come here.”

Another pause. Interminable. Marta couldn’t look at her sister. 

“You can really pick ‘em, huh?” Alicia said. “At least he’s pretty.”

Marta was startled enough to laugh. Some of the tension squeezed out of the car, like air flowing from a popped balloon. 

“Telling Mama is going to be a bitch,” Alicia said as they climbed out of the car. “But we’ll work our way up to that.”

“Oh hell,” Marta muttered, and followed her inside. 

  
  
  


Spring turned golden and dipped into fall, and Marta didn’t hear from him. 

She won the case that the Thrombeys had brought up against her. It had taken so much longer than it should have, but it finally happened. Everything was finally hers. The house, the money, the company, the assets.

And they couldn’t take it away. 

Alicia finished school for the summer. She split her time evenly between Marta’s and their mother’s houses before she headed off to another internship, taking both the gift of her companionship and the burden of her constant inquiries about Ransom with her. It was bad and good. 

The house was very quiet. 

The Fourth of July arrived. Marta looked out at the back lawn, thought of Harlan and Ransom and their love of games. Didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. 

He didn’t call. 

She refused to ask Linda for updates. She wanted to know, but she wouldn’t stoop to that level. 

Blanc visited a few times, and she drove to whatever location he was investigating a few times, and Marta continued to be surprised at how genuinely satisfying she found solving mysteries. Gathering clues and fitting them together. Making sense of things. 

Silence from Ransom. Marta’s heart went back to leaping every time the phone rang.

She continued to work her way through Harlan’s books. Not the same kind of thrilling as real life, but just as compelling, she thought. 

Sometimes she remembered how he’d written it down when she thought she’d switched his medicine. She wondered what kind of story that would have become. 

  
  
  


The knock came on a burnt-bronze evening in November. 

Marta was reading  _ The Badger;  _ one of the last of his books _.  _ A tale of danger and hope, love and loss, evil and redemption. She marked her place and set it aside carefully. And then she stood, and then she went downstairs. 

It had been three years since Harlan died. 

The stairs creaked as she descended. 

It was all so different this time when she opened the door. 

No gun in her hands. No quiet-creeping terror prickling at the back of her neck. No squinting out into a darkened yard, fear making a racetrack of her veins. 

Instead—there he was. Backlit by a setting sun, a day-bright form, all of those golden edges. The light made something burnished out of his hair. Marta’s heart was still racing this time, but it wasn’t from fear.

“It’s you,” she said quietly. 

She thought he was trying to smile, but maybe  _ he  _ was scared. Of this house. This place. These memories. 

He’d trimmed his beard, but his hair had grown out a little. The same clothes as last time, she thought. Nothing that caught her eye. 

A scar by his hairline. Extra lines at the corners of his eyes, across his forehead. 

Marta remembered the way his cheek had felt beneath her lips. 

Half a year since she’d seen him, but she hadn’t forgotten that.

“It’s me,” he said. 

It was hard to breathe. 

They looked at each other. Looked at each other across the threshold of this great big house, a few feet between them, all that sky beyond. 

“I, uh…” he said eventually. “This is all legal this time.”

“Good,” she said. Her voice was too thready, too close to a whisper. If she took three steps toward him, she could press into him, against him, around him. “Good, I wouldn’t want to…”

She couldn’t speak. That was alright, she thought; neither could he. 

Marta stepped forward. Didn’t stop going until she was right before him, chin tipped up to look him in the eye. “Can I—?”

“Yes,” he said, almost speaking over her. He was stock still, not making any move to touch her, but this close she could see that he was almost trembling with the effort that took. 

Marta took another step and he swayed forward slightly and they met in the middle, warmth against warmth, there on the edge of the day. 

Her arms fit perfectly around his waist. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, and dug her fingers into the fabric of his coat. Hanging on. 

Ransom leaned into her like they’d been fired together in a kiln, fused along all their edges, melted into one solid formation. Marta felt his ribs expand with the breath he took, and felt them jerk a little when he shuddered against her. 

Those breaths made noise. In, and out, and in. That was what she had gotten to know of him first, to truly know of him: the sounds he made when he breathed. 

Marta knew him so well. 

He made a small sound. Tucked his lips into her hair. She let him. She didn’t pull away. 

She had thought of this. Of how it would be once Ransom got out. Strange, maybe, she had thought: the first time she had seen him out of prison in nearly two years, the first time she’d been truly alone with him in just as long. Awkward, she had worried. Unfamiliar, she had worried. 

She’d been wrong. Ransom had just looked at her with so much warmth that she still wore that feeling along her skin, even with her eyes closed. 

“I have to tell you something,” he said after a moment, still locked in place against her. 

Her eyes were closed. She didn’t know when that had happened. The collar of his cheap shirt scratched her cheek a bit. He smelled warm and close and comforting and nondescript. 

“I think I know,” she said. 

A laugh. So long since she’d heard him do that. “Can I say it anyway?”

She couldn’t force her mouth open. 

“Tell me no,” he said quietly. “If you want to.”

She didn’t want to tell him no. She wanted to hear it. She wanted him to say it. 

Heart on her tongue. 

“Tell me.”

He got very still. He straightened just enough so that he could look her in the eye. 

“I’m in love with you,” Ransom said. She’d told him to tell her and he was, and it was true. “I thought you should probably know.”

Marta already had, somehow, in some part of her that was deep enough not to reach the surface until she brought it there. It made sense. It made sense like the tangle of their arms and the gentle pressure of their torsos made sense: slotting together, locking in place. The best option because it was the only option. 

His eyes drooped shut when she touched him, like the pads of her fingers on his skin had triggered an off switch she didn’t even know existed. His lips parted. Slack. 

“I’m kissing you now,” she murmured. 

“Whatever you want,” he said, a little out of control. So she did. 

His lips were shockingly soft beneath hers. He was still and undemanding and yet somehow completely, entirely consumed in every little gesture she made toward him. His hands dropped to her waist and his fingers flexed, lightly, just once, like he couldn’t help it. 

He loosened his arms around her when she kissed him, like he knew she’d need to be able to step away if she wanted to. She didn’t want to: she still appreciated the gesture. 

Marta pressed her forehead to his when she was done, and then to his cheek, and then to his shoulder. 

“You’ll stay,” she breathed. Not a question. 

“Yeah,” Ransom murmured. He ran his hand very lightly down the back of her head and over her hair, and she could feel it shaking. “Yeah. If you’ll have me.”

She would. 

**Author's Note:**

> of course there will be a part 3. who do you think i am.


End file.
